"The rescuers need to be rescued," Plaquemines Parish Sheriff's Capt. Keith Wattigney darkly joked against the backdrop of an angry Hurricane Isaac sky. In an attempt to retrieve Ricky Harvey from a roaring 5-foot Hurricane Isaac storm surge along Louisiana 23 on Wednesday, Plaquemines Parish Sheriff Lonnie Greco became trapped. For at least 10 minutes, he and Harvey clung to a street sign. Only the sign, "Pointe-a-la-Hache," stuck out above the gushing water.

Keith WattigneyPlaquemines Parish Sheriff Capt. Keith Wattigney's red truck is outside a home as he seeks to help people evacuate.

Wattigney threw some rope to the men who were holding on for dear life, then drove the pickup close enough to scoop them up. But, in the process, the truck sank into the road's deep median and stalled for good.

So for about three hours, the sheriff, Wattigney, Harvey and his wife Leah sat trapped in the middle of the rapidly rising highway-river. Sitting for hours as the water rose steadily, the four began to consider the impending darkness and the 6 inches of water gradually coming into the truck, sloshing around their calves.

The first rescue

Knowing that many families had remained in Venice and Buras despite mandatory evacuation orders earlier in the week, Greco and Wattigney had hopped into Wattigney's monstrously enormous red pickup truck about 10 a.m. for the 66-mile journey down the peninsula.

Editor's note

Times-Picayune reporter Benjamin Alexander-Bloch was with Plaquemines Parish Sheriff Lonnie Greco and Capt. Keith Wattigney as they attemped to rescue flood victims in lower Plaquemines Parish during Hurricane Isaac. He filed this report.

The obstacle was Isaac: the juggernaut tropical storm, then-hurricane, then tropical storm, that has pummeled Plaquemines this week.

"I want to get down there before it gets dark," Greco said. "It's going to get dark there fast, black. Once it gets dark down there, we're screwed."

On the drive down, drainage ditches were now canals, broken telephone poles and lines were tangled around houses and the wind was blaring anywhere between 60 and 80 miles per hour.

About 10 miles north of Pointe-a-la-Hache, there were only a couple of inches of water on Louisiana 23 -- the one road that traverses the parish's west bank -- and about a foot or two on its deep median. But to the right, to the west, the marshland resembled a lake. And as the truck headed south past Myrtle Grove, two men were placing sandbags on top of Hesco baskets, the sand-filled rectangles meant to block storm surge. The northbound lanes already were completely under water.

Greco picked up his phone. Another caller from Venice. "I'm going to try and make my way down there to see you, you hear," the sheriff told each caller, in turn. A baby bird sitting on a pile of prairie grass floated along the roadway, now a constant stream of water.

Entering Pointe-a-la-Hache, Capt. Mike Martin stopped the vehicle and told the sheriff that a woman from Buras, Leah Harvey, was stranded in deep water a few miles down.

In the distance, Louisiana 23 fanned out -- a mighty river. While the news all morning was the flooding in eastern Plaquemines, water had begun to move, foot after foot, from the marshes to the parish's western communities. Louisiana 23's pavement was no longer visible, and its violent currents swayed the 14,500-pound pickup from side to side.

Keith WattigneyLouisiana 23 in Plaquemines Parish was more river than roadway on Wednesday during Hurricane Isaac.

The grated bumps alongside the median -- Leah Harvey's granddaughter says the bumps are there so blind people can drive -- told Wattigney when to readjust his path so the truck wouldn't sink into the median's deeper waterhole.

"If you get in that median, it's done," Greco warned. "Whatever you do, don't dip down there, don't dip, or we'll be done."

"I see lights out there!" Wattigney called out.

Two cowboy hats were propped against the truck's windshield. In addition to being Greco's right hand, Wattigney runs the Sheriff's Office horse group that is a frequent sight at Mardi Gras parades. He also raises llamas with his wife on a Mississippi farm, occasionally bringing the llamas down to the parish.

He bought his giant truck -- an International CXT -- in Lincoln, Neb., after seeing one he couldn't live without during a llama show there. A sticker on its rear window reads, "Bad ass toys aren't just for boys." A yellow caution sign in the truck shows a black llama, "Warning. I can spit over 12 feet with ease."

Driving down the river, Greco recognized the lights as belonging to Leah Harvey's white Buick Enclave and, sure enough, in the distance, there she was, wading in the water beside it. A road sign beside her was covered so high that only the words "Speed Limit" were visible, but the exact speed limit listed below was submerged.

As they drove to her, a man became visible beside a Chevy pickup truck hauling a U-Haul trailer. It was Ricky Harvey, whom Greco has known since he was a kid. Greco hailed him, "We'll come back to you! We're getting Leah first!" It appeared Ricky couldn't hear him. "Leah first!" Greco repeated.

While waiting for help for about an hour, Ricky Harvey's pickup truck and the trailer had been pulled by the current to face southbound, a 180-degree about-face.

The truck soon pulled up alongside Leah Harvey, and as Wattigney helped her into the car, Greco started walking back toward Ricky, slogging through water well above his waist. "We left Buras because I have problems with my heart," Leah Harvey told Wattigney. "And, when we got around the curve it was just a little water but then it was just wild and once you get in it, you are not sure what to do."

Wattigney put his truck in reverse and began to backtrack to the sheriff and Ricky Harvey.

The second rescue

"Where's the sheriff? You see the sheriff?" He'd vanished in the distance. As the truck got close and after several bracing minutes, bobbing figures became visible. The two men clung to a submerged signpost. Harvey couldn't swim, and Greco had tried to bring him across to the southbound lane, but the currents were too fierce.

Wattigney climbed out of the driver's seat, over the top of his truck, and into its bed. He grabbed some yellow rope and attempted, in large circular swings, to throw it to the flailing pair. With the intense northeast winds and the extreme distance, the cowboy couldn't hit the mark.

Then he jumped into the water. Tying one end of the rope to a secured spare tire in his trunk, Wattigney held the other end as he swam through the water to bring the sheriff, and Harvey, to safety. But the tide was too strong, so he returned after managing to swim only halfway across the northbound lane.

All other options seemingly exhausted, Wattigney drove his truck into the deep median to get close enough to reach the sheriff. It worked. He pulled the two men in. Ricky Harvey joined his wife, exhausted.

Despite spotty cell phone reception, with several cell towers down, Greco managed to get some calls and texts through.Keith WattigneyLeah Harvey, left, and Ricky Harvey, right, in the back of Keith Wattigney's truck.

"The truck we are in, it's killed. The motor won't start. ... I'm in Pointe-a-la-Hache... I ain't got nothing to look. ... No, nothing around," Greco said over the phone.

One of his top brass eventually got back to him, telling him the National Guard was on its way to the rescue. "It's unbelievable that I could be so stupid," Rick Harvey told the men. "You definitely saved our life."

As the hours wore on and the water rose up the 10-foot-tall truck's elevated doors, the four talked about children -- both the Harveys and Wattigney have three boys -- and debris floated by: a piece of an old refrigerator, a flower pot, a lifesaver. A constant whistle, which sounded like a phone ringing in the distance, came from the wind rushing against the large steel transition power lines alongside the road.

Ricky Harvey asked to the car: "What time is it now?" "It's 2," Wattigney replied. Ricky Harvey began to fear that soon it would start getting dark and the storm might intensify further. "At least you got to go down with the big rig," joked Wattigney, referring to his mammoth truck.

"The worst thing you can do is lose your cool and panic," Wattigney explained. "If you lose your head, you can't think of what to do next."

As time continued to wear on, Greco made some last calls before his phone died. "I need you to tell Ty Wiltz that we are trapped and need help quick before water comes up too high here," he told someone.

Then turning to the Harveys, he said, "They'll be coming. You ain't going to be seeing no Gilligan's Island. They'll be coming."

About 3 p.m. Wednesday, a truck hauling an airboat arrived on the Mississippi River levee nearby. The airboat pulled up, scooped up the truck's passengers and whirled them away.

On the ride back, it was apparent that for miles and miles to the north, communities had became inundated with water. The sheriff and Wattigney estimated that from at least Myrtle Grove to Port Sulphur, there was about 10 feet of water surrounding homes. "This is worse than Katrina," Greco said during that third rescue ride of the day. "Definitely worse."

After getting off the boat, the rescue team took the Harveys in a separate car and rushed the sheriff and Wattigney, now extremely late, to a Gov. Bobby Jindal news conference in Belle Chasse. When they arrived, Greco walked up and shook Jindal's hand, and stood with him, Plaquemines Parish Billy Nungesser, and other state officials in front of the reams of television cameras.

"We're going to make sure we're getting people out of harms way," Jindal told reporters.

Nungesser said the mandatory evacuation had expanded on the west bank as more and more water made its way from the adjacent marshes. Wednesday late afternoon and throughout Thursday, rescue efforts continued. But, by Thursday morning, water in western Plaquemines had begun to recede.